


Love Is Stored In The Jaeger

by lazarwolff



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Age of Exploration, Fluff, M/M, Prompt Fic, Valentine's Day Fluff, these guys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-06 01:21:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17930066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazarwolff/pseuds/lazarwolff
Summary: bits and bobs from tumblr.





	1. Charmed Lives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wanted to write about boats. more to do with master and commander than the age of exploration

Hermann’s sea legs aren’t any better than his land legs, not surprising but damned inconvenient. He supervises the two large chests which contain his books and his tools, only the ones which are vital for the voyage, and a largeish container of lemon juice cut with sugar in case of scurvy. He has read accounts of how even the most prepared voyages run out of the provisions needed to counter the disease, and he isn’t keen to experience it firsthand. Besides, the nature of their expedition means that they won’t see familiar lands for quite a while.

Finally, his things are loaded and he can attend to other matters on the ship. Captain Pentecost and his first mate Hercules Hansen met with him ahead of the voyage and informed him he would be bunking with another man of science, from America, and to his delight, Hermann found he recognized the name on the manifest.

Dr. Newton Geiszler has been writing to him from that distant shore for several years, usually on matters of science but lately, the conversation has been declining into less formal, more familiar territory. Hermann had wondered why he hadn’t received a missive in a while and is terribly excited to meet the fellow in the flesh for the first time.

He stands on the main deck, watching the bustle of activity that comes on the first day of the voyage, and wondering if he could recognize Dr. Geiszler by sight. He is no believer in the field of phrenology, finds that the observations lack rigour, but can’t help but feel he’s looking for a brow the size of Schopenhauer’s or perhaps Beethoven. Hermann never asked Dr. Geiszler’s age, but the breadth of his study indicates someone no younger than five and forty, probably older, though coming to the age where cavorting with altruistic privateers might be hazardous to his health.

Hermann’s reverie is interrupted by a young man barrelling into him.

“Sorry!” this newcomer all but yells. “I didn’t see you!”

He speaks with an American twang and has spectacles in his hands which are broken at the bridge. Hermann nods.

“Yes, I suppose you need those.”

“If Benjamin Franklin hadn’t invented the bifocal lens, I would be ill-read indeed,” the stranger says, holds up the right lens to his eye like a monocle. “That’s better. Are you an able seaman, or do you do something else on this ship?”

“Hardly a seaman, able or otherwise,” Hermann says, gesturing to his cane. “I am one of the researchers who’s paid for passage.”

“An adventurer then,” he says, stick out a hand with a prodigious layer of dirt on it for Hermann to shake. “Myself as well. I guess I’ll see you around, I have to talk to the Captain.”

“On the continent, it’s good manners to introduce yourself after a handshake,” Hermann says.

“In America,” the fellow says with a crook of his eyebrow, “It’s good manners to mind your own business.”

The rude little man looks around the deck and then walks in one direction with a purpose that must surely be misplaced, as the Captain’s office is in the other way. Hermann thinks about letting him know, saving him time, but then again, it wouldn’t be good American manners.

Hermann mills about the main deck for a little while longer, and returns to his cabin ahead of dinner, only to find the bespectacled American from earlier sitting on the other bed, carefully repairing his glasses.

“What are you doing here?” Hermann asks.

“I’m… with the spectacles,” the man mutters, hardly looking up. His brow is scrunched in concentration. “What are you doing here?”

“I bunk here. So does Dr. Newton Geiszler, but you’re not him,” Hermann says.

“That is a  _startlingly_  confident statement from you, Dr. Gottlieb,” the man says and puts on his repaired glasses. Then he pulls out a piece of paper from the breast pocket of his waistcoat, in a hand that, with some dread Hermann recognizes as his own. “But I’m afraid you’re incorrect, as you’ve been so many times in our correspondence. I am indeed Dr. Newton Geiszler, though I see my conduct outside of letter-writing distresses you. I promise I’m not that impressed with the empirical evidence of you, either.”

Hermann thinks dully that the ship is already out of the harbour, and out of sight of any land. As if he can read his mind, Geiszler laughs.

“Looks like we’re stuck with each other, huh? Until we get eaten or we kill each other.”

There’s no answer to that. Hermann can’t very well admit that he will have Geiszler killed by one of their less savoury shipmates at first opportunity. It must be an offence punishable by death to entrap someone with years of intellectually stimulating, even-footed conversation, and then turn out to be a total boor.

“Doctor Gottlieb… Hermann?”

Hermann blinks, realizes he has been standing there for some time while thinking Geiszler’s murder through. Geiszler is watching him with a little smile.

“What are you smiling about?”

“You’re a funny sort,” Geiszler says. “I daresay we’re going to get on famously.”

 _That will never happen_ , Hermann promises himself, and excuses himself to go to dinner.


	2. Things You Said At 1AM

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt fic.

Newt is sleeping, head resting on Hermann’s chest. Hermann wonders how Newt can sleep while Hermann still has his laptop open and glaring, but Newt is asleep by eleven in the evening most nights, midnight if they have a date night. Hermann remembers those long caffeine-fueled stints from the war, contrasts them to the dead sleep Newton succumbs to as soon as he takes off his glasses.

Hermann has always been a night owl, even before the war and the desperate bid for time which predicated twenty-hour days and not seeing a bed for far longer than that. Now his nights are calmer, but he is still awake, catching up on leisure reading and a touch of writing.

Newt shifts in his sleep and Hermann absentmindedly rubs the hair on the nape of his neck.

“Sweet man,” he mutters, heart full even though there have been a great many evenings like this. Hermann would never call Newt such a thing while he was able to hear; he loves his husband but there’s only so much teasing to which he can be open, and these are tender feelings, tender to the touch.

Part of him wishes Newt would wake up and hear, and never have to doubt, as he must. Part of him is mortified at the prospect.

“I love you,” he says into Newt’s hair.  _And one day I’ll pluck up the courage to say it as many times as you need to hear it, and more_ , he does not say.


	3. Things You Said Between Your Teeth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> more prompt fic. Like the dialogue in this one.

“In _fur_ iating!”

And that’s when Newt knows he is in trouble, because of that stress on the second syllable and the glare he can feel singing the hairs on the back of his neck.

“Hermann!” he says with fake cheer. “What’s eating ya!”

“I’ll. Tell. You what is ‘eating me’, Doktor Geiszler–”

The syntax is truly alarming, and Newt turns in his broke ass wheely chair because he doesn’t even remember what he could have done to make Hermann Big Mad, and then his grin slides off his face like so much snow off a roof.

“I see,” he says. “You don’t think it’s funny.”

Between two thin fingers, Hermann has an article from the internet which he has printed on a printer specifically so he could brandish it like the 49 Theses. It’s an editorial in the New York Times, written by Dr. Newton Geiszler, about the day to day life in the Shatterdome. Maybe it’s a little irreverent. Maybe it pokes fun at the pseudo-military fetish the PPDC totally has. Maybe certain people with pseudo-military fetishes would be offended when they read it.

“Why would I find this funny?”

“Because. It is?” Newt offers weakly. “Look, I’ve already been  _reprimanded_ , if that’s what you’ve stormed in to do…”

“A complete waste of time–” Hermann’s jaw couldn’t be stiffer if it was wired shut.

“An expenditure of fifteen minutes, Hermann, and if you want to get into what constitutes a waste of time it’s this conversation, so if you’ll excuse me…”

“Don’t you swivel your chair away from me!”

“If it bothers you why don’t you  _swivel my way_ , you uptight son of a bitch?”

Their argument extends well into lunchtime, by which time very little work has been accomplished, but they’ve learned ten colourful insults apiece from one another and Hermann has to sheepishly come to Newt’s side of the lab and collect the chalk which was thrown that way.

“Wait until you read my follow up piece,” Newt grins and watches Hermann’s back stack completely straight.


	4. not Fuzz contingent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Valentime fluff. title from an emily dickinson poem

“Hah, Valentine’s Day, guess that’s coming up,” Newt says, chewing on a pen while he stares at his lab inventory. “I don’t do that one.”

“What?” Hermann says, looking up.

“Why the shock, man? I’m Jewish, and  _so are you,_ by the way, so Catholic feast days aren’t exactly my thing, and anyway giving valentines in class isn’t such a big tradition in MIT, or if it  _was_  my classmates were not including the literal child in their midst,” Newt explains, and shrugs largely. “Besides, I don’t know what it’s like on the Continent, but American Valentine’s Day is a bleeding Frankenday of financial expectations and broken hearts. Everyone knows the real holiday is February 15th, ‘cause of the discount cheap-ass chocolate made with child labour. The whole thing is tacky and unethical.”

“I didn’t know you felt so deeply about a holiday you can’t even stay home for,” Hermann says.

“Well, as a physicist you should know nothing can exist in the universe without having a Geiszler opinion attached to it,” Newt says, and starts drumming with his pen. “Including that  _shirt,_ Hermann. Is there an Ugliest-shirts-in-the-world store I don’t know about? Does it have an outlet in Hong Kong? Can I burn it to the ground?”

“I can take off the shirt, at least. You can’t take off your tattoos.”

“You going to take off your shirt, dude– ow! Hey!”

A piece of chalk worn down to the size of a coin, useless for writing but just right for throwing, hits Newton square in the temple. It’s hardly equitable because everything Newt has at an arm’s reach to throw back is either sharp or a biohazard (and Newt also cannot throw for shit, to Hermann’s delight). The tradeoff is listening to Newt’s incessant grousing, which eventually whittles down to aimless humming and his distracted self-mutterings, a soundtrack for work Hermann nearly finds agreeable.

Hermann finds himself thinking about Valentine’s Day, and the idiotic pang he gets in his chest at the premise of Newton never receiving a card. The biologist is correct, and even in Germany there was a dreadful sense of obligation attached to Valentine’s, and a great many lonely days on Hermann’s side. But he does like the smaller gestures of the day, the cards and so on.

He rummages through his sizeable collection of stationery when he returns to his quarters that night. His and Newton’s correspondence may be on hiatus (maybe when they’re an ocean apart again, not sick of each other’s faces, they’ll take it up again) but Hermann is still a prolific letter writer, to his siblings and other mathematicians. He likes the time in between, the time someone can take in order to have something said perfectly. He also makes thank you notes, tries to remember the Jaeger technicians’ birthdays for homemade cards, and so on.

After maybe a little too much time with the paper scissors, the calligraphy pen, and fiddly paper bits, it is finished. Hermann checks with a straight edge, finds that the card folds quite flat.

As a biologist, perhaps Newt would appreciate the black cut out of the bee against a pale gold field; St. Valentine was the patron saint of bees, after all, and Newton is a little like a bee, riding abroad in ostentation, to paraphrase Miss Dickinson. Inside, an inscription – ‘A small gesture on this unethical and Catholic feast day- from Doctor Hermann Gottlieb.’

He buys a chocolate bar with bits of honeycomb toffee in it closer to the date, and tapes it to the back.

Valentine’s Day comes around, and Hermann looks at the card he secreted to Newton’s side of the lab, feeling silly all of a sudden. Newt never said he wanted a valentine, it was just something Hermann  _thought_ he would want, and that is very presumptuous, possibly the kind of behaviour Newton dislikes on this day…

Newton clatters into a lab, a giant box wedged under his chin and a half toast in his mouth.

“Hey Hermann,” he says through his mouthful of bread and drops the box on the work table they begrudgingly share. “You ready to get this bread?”

“You seem to have masticated the bread already,” Hermann says. “So no thank you.”

“Oh my god, how are you literally seventy-five years old?” Newt says, finishes his breakfast, and drops into his wheeled chair, where he will surely push himself around for at least a half hour before getting to work. Hermann turns to his chalkboard and promptly breaks his chalk when Newt screams like he’s been killed.

“Are you quite all right?” he asks, looks over. Newt is holding his card.

“You made me a card with a  _bee_ on it?” he says. “From  _Doctor Hermann Gottlieb?_ Oh my god, dude.”

“I apologize if it is inappropriate.”

“Inappropriate, no way, this is…” Newt pauses, and pulls out a bag of chocolate from the box he walked in with, tosses it to Hermann’s side. He cannot throw for shit, so it lands a couple of feet away from Hermann’s desk. “Look, I was being a bit dickish about Valentine’s, but I thought you maybe like it, and I should at least buy a bag of chocolate at full price for us to eat. Didn’t think to make you a card, though! But I can fix that.”

He carefully cuts a post-it note into the shape of a heart and walks over to stick it on Hermann’s chalkboard. It says FROM NEWT and has a very small bee drawn under the inscription. Hermann smiles and starts unwrapping a chocolate, when he notices.

“Doctor Geiszler, are these chocolate shaped like  _kaiju?”_

**Author's Note:**

> find me at fingalruche on tumblr, @starletbrassier on twitter.


End file.
